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At the age of fifteen, Friedrich Stossel finds himself accepted to a program for gifted students at Leipzig’s Karl Marx University, despite having never applied for admission. Thus recruited by the Stasi, he spends several years working for an organization to which he feels no genuine ideological commitment. Still, he carries out missions with professional aplomb. When a fellow officer is revealed to have been embezzling, Stossel is assigned the task of killing the man.
Friedrich and his wife, Ana, have a precocious young son named Peter. In the waning days of the Cold War, a Mengele-like scientist named Wittenberg conducts medical experiments that give the child super-intelligence. Learning that their son is going to be abducted and taken to a school in Moscow, Friedrich and Ana must flee Germany for the safety of the United States before they’re both murdered by agents of the state. But even as they attempt to build a new life in America, desperate men seek to steal Peter from them.
Replogle has written a slow-burn thriller. Its more fantastical elements are grounded by the author's impressive knowledge of life behind the Iron Curtain. The story demonstrates admirable patience in establishing characters, detailing their histories, and arranging the plot so that their lives intersect in a manner reminiscent of Better Call Saul. This attention to detail makes the moments of violence all the more devastating. Characters die brutally and often. There’s a scene involving Friedrich and another man inside a bank that is almost unbearably tense. This is old-fashioned storytelling at its best: cerebral, suspenseful, and finely crafted.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review